red thread
by Verboten Byacolate
Summary: She was obviously frightened. It wasn't hard to tell. "You have to help me cover my navel, or the lightning will steal it! Please!" Who was he to break human tradition? DunexShizuka
1. red thread

Disclaimer; Vampire Doll belongs to the uber-talented Erika Kari!

* * *

**Red Thread

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**

"But... but Dune-kun!"

She'd put it off long enough, and so he took the liberty of teaching her himself.

"I don't want sewing lessons!"

"Listen, miss Class President," he groused, plucking a small needle from Guilt-na-Zan's sewing kit and taking her hand in the other. He placed the needle in the hand. "You are a girl. Girls sew. That's just the way God made you."

"But Dune-kuuun...!"

"No buts," he replied sternly, grabbing his own needle and threading it. "Now you."

Ten minutes later, she had threaded her needle. Dune sighed. "Ten... minutes."

"I'm not good at this!" Shizuka said, tears pricking the corners of brilliant ivory eyes. "I can barely see this white string!" He flinched; tears and those who shed them were not his forte. Instead, he began to rummage around in the kit once more.

"You have to learn to do this," he said, but more gently. "I won't be here to patch your umbrellas forever, you know."

She started. "I... I never thought of that." She cast her eyes to the side. "Do you want to leave, Dune-kun?"

"I..." _don't know what to say to that_. He sighed.

"What are you looking for?"

"Darker thread," he replied quietly, "so you can see it."

"Oh, Dune-kun..." She smiled, reaching into the large kit herself. Let me help you.

He glanced at her. She was so focused on--

"OW!"

"Dune-kun!"

Both pairs of hands shot up at the same time, hers grabbing his. "What's wrong??"

"I pricked my... finger..." he said, blinking at their hands. Both were tangled with weightless, earlier-unnoticed crimson string.

Shizuka's heart skipped a beat. "Oh... oh my."

"What is it?" Dune asked, slightly flustered. She was still holding his hands, after all. "If it's the string, it'll be easy to get off, but untangling it is another matter..."

"No... it's..." she wiggled her fingers, blushing. "The legend."

"Eh?"

"Th-there's a legend," she said, "that an invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place or circumstance... anything, really. Fate. The thread may stretch or tangle, but... it will never break." 

They were quiet for a moment until Dune let out a shaky laugh. "Well, we've met, have we not?"

Shizuka blinked and then... smiled.

"We have indeed, Dune-kun."

"There's not..." he paused. "More to the legend is there?"

_Oh please, Lord, please, tell me, please oh p--_

"Well... I suppose I would like to find out." She entered into his unfathomable ocher gaze. Slowly, ever so slowly, her fingers shyly fit themselves in between his. "Wouldn't you... Dune-kun?"

He breathed and smiled.

"Bring it on, Class President."

* * *

_Oh, it is love  
From the first  
time I pressed my hand into yours  
thinking, oh, is it love? _

_- Fin -_

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**Hee! Shizuka and Dune together taste like pretty! Unfortunately, I can't find any fans for them on Youtube, deviantArt, or fafiction. I feel so sad.  
REVIEW IF YOU SUPPORT TEH LOVERLINESS!!  
****-Bya**


	2. first dream

**First Dream**

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"Dune-kun, what did you dream about last night?"

Shizuka leaned her broom handle against the wall of her kitchen and looked at him. She smiled at the sight of the younger-looking Dune sitting at her table with an uneaten plate of cookies in front of him. He gave her a questioning look. "I don't remember. Why do you ask?"

"Well," Shizuka started, taking a cookie and nibbling on it, "it's said that the first dream you have of a new year will come true." She pointed at her calendar. "Since today is January first, it would have been last night's dream that will come true." She bit into her cookie once more, glancing at him worriedly. "It would have been nice to know what you're dreaming of, so I could help it come true."

"Sorry," Dune said, looking once more around her kitchen. It was a small room, but clean, and with all the necessities a human's kitchen would need. He was a little worried about the wooden rack of knives, jutting out into the open where a distracted class president could accidentally puncture holes into her pale skin, but he quickly brushed the apprehension aside. She'd been living here all her life, so certainly she could avoid a large amount of long, sharp silverware used to impale fruit and the like.

He hoped.

"Dune-kun, are you all right? You look kind of pale…"

The demon looked back at his hostess, who leaned forward, pressing the back of her hand against his forehead and then her own to compare temperatures.

"W-wa-what?"

Unsatisfied with her results, she settled her hand on the back of his neck and pressed their foreheads together. Her eyes widened. "Now you're all red and hot! I didn't know demons got sick!"

Flustered, he avoided her eyes.

"I'm not sick," he said. "I just… remembered my dream."

"Really?" She beamed, removing her flesh from his and getting a chair to sit in. The class president gave him her full attention. "What was it, Dune-kun?!"

_Chips of bright ivory danced when their owner's demon companion kneeled beside her desk. The large, empty classroom seemed much smaller when the beast was that much larger. "Hey, class president," he said, his voice an uncharacteristic murmur. Her fingers immediately melded into his when his hands found the ones on her lap._

"_Yes?" she replied, her cheeks a brilliant shade of rose that made him smile. _

"_This is my dream. What are you doing in it?"_

_She laughed softly, leaning in so that her nose merely brushed his. "I should ask you the same thing, Dune-kun. Usually I dream about Gakuen Heaven, but you're almost never incorporated into my thoughts."_

"_You're saying you don't dream about me?" He faked an indignant look to which she giggled at in return._

"_I think about you too much to let you invade my sleep, Dune-kun." She closed the distance betw-- _

"Dune-kun?"

He looked up, blinking, and realized with a blush that his fingers were on his lips. She eyed them curiously. "What did you dream about?"

Dune glanced at her hands, folded neatly in her lap, and kept his own curled on the table.

"When it happens, I promise to tell you, okay?"

* * *

_You're my daydream  
__You know that I've been thinking about you lately  
__And every time I look at you, I can't explain,  
__I feel insane, and I can't get away  
__You're my daydream_

**Lyrics: Daydream, by Avril Lavigne.  
REVIEW FOR THE PRETTY-TASTING PAIRING!!  
-Bya**


	3. cover your navel

**Cover Your Navel**

Unbandaged fingers found the pale flesh of his protector's stomach to be quite extraordinarily smooth. Dune was used to sleeping at the school, but when Shizuka had seen angry gray clouds cluttering up the sky, she immediately requested that he come home with her. The difference between the couch in the teachers' lounge and the young woman's futon were unmistakably large: for one, the futon had a couply comfortors, not to mention Shizuka herself. Nothing but dark seeped through the class president's window.

Nothing, of course, until a flash of white-hot light gave only a second's-worth of a look around the room and Shizuka's frightened eyes.

"Don't move, Dune-kun!" she whispered shakily, pressing her own fingers down over his. His hand molded further into her abdomen. "Don't move!"

"Why are we doing this again, class president?" he mumbled, though not finding it an entirely disagreeable position to be in. A warm bed and a warmer girl curled up into him? He'd had it worse, for sure.

"Grandmother told me," she whispered into his shoulder, "that that lightning will steal my navel if I don't keep it covered during a thunderstorm!"

"I see."

Why break human traditions? If she felt more secure when his digits splayed over her lower torso, fingers forming pretzel-knots with hers when the thunder rumbled, close enough to hear his confused (frantic) heartbeat, well then, so be it. Who was he to rob this girl of her security?

"But don't mind me," she said when the noise died down, her voice no longer a quivering mess (though her legs woven with his could not say the same). "Please sleep, Dune-kun. But don't leave me."

As it was, Shizuka fell asleep first, despite the rolling drumbeat above. Dune himself was beginning to drift of when his charge shifted, instinctively moving closer to his warmth, thereby pushing his hand a little ways south. The monster seized power of his appendage again when it was a considerable distance lower from her belly button. Slowly, so as not to wake her, he pulled it back over her navel.

He wouldn't want it stolen by the lightning. After all, when would he ever get access to a free futon if his reason for being in it was gone?

Dune rationalized that anyone who happened to be in his current position would be blushing as well.

_I'll bask in your forever...  
I want to drag you down  
Down with me_

**--**

**Lyrics: _Angels Fuck, Devils Kiss_ by Jack Off Jill**


End file.
